Psalm 119:73 | “Your hands have made and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.”

The psalmist begins the yodh stanza by confessing that God is his creator. God made him. God is the one who fashioned him or established him. Because God created him, God alone knows how to give him true understanding. Knowing that the Lord completes the work he begins, the psalmist depends on him for the grace he needs to learn his commands. Calvin notes that whenever the psalmist asks for understanding, he is admitting that both he and all people live in natural blindness. Our only remedy is the illumination of the Holy Spirit. It is our ability to receive understanding from the Lord and learn his commands that sets humanity apart from the rest of creation. Only those whose lives are governed by his word display humanity as he intended it to be. May our obedience display the image of God to a lost world, and may they long for the understanding to live consistently with God’s commands as a result.